ONE:Queen Sophie, who still clung pertinaciously to the idea of the English match, was, of course, bitterly hostile to the nuptial alliance with Elizabeth. Indeed, the queen still adhered to the idea of the double English marriage, and exhausted all the arts of diplomacy and intrigue in the endeavor to secure the Princess Amelia for the Crown Prince, and to unite the Prince of Wales to a younger sister of Wilhelmina. Very naturally she cherished feelings of strong antipathy toward Elizabeth, who seemed to be the cause, though the innocent cause, of the frustration of her plans. She consequently spoke of the princess in the most contemptuous manner, and did every thing in her power to induce her son to regard her with repugnance. But nothing could change the inexorable will of the king. Early in March the doomed Princess Elizabeth, a beautiful, artless child of seventeen years, who had seen but little of society, and was frightened in view of the scenes before her, was brought to Berlin to be betrothed to the Crown Prince, whom she had never seen, of whom she could not have heard any very favorable reports, and from142 whom she had never received one word of tenderness. The wreck of happiness of this young princess, which was borne so meekly and uncomplainingly, is one of the saddest which history records. Just before her arrival, Fritz wrote to his sister as follows. The letter was dated Berlin, March 6, 1732:It is late. I wish you had done.
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THREE:The next morning, taking with him a small escort, and leaving his army to follow with as much speed as possible, he rode rapidly down the western bank of the Oder to G?rgast, where he had an encampment of about fifteen thousand Prussian troops. At five oclock in the morning of Tuesday the two bands were united. He now had at his command thirty thousand men.456 Cüstrin was on the eastern bank of the Oder, near the confluence of the Warta. A few miles below Cüstrin, at Schaumburg, there were portions of a bridge across the Oder. Here the Russians had erected a redoubt. Frederick ordered a violent attack upon that redoubt. During the night, while the attention of the Russians was occupied by the assault, Frederick marched his army twelve miles farther down the river, and crossed, without any loss, at Güstebiese. His baggage train he left, carefully guarded, on the western bank of the river.
THREE:If you then find the prince contrite and humble, you will engage him to fall on his knees with you, to ask pardon of God with tears of penitence. But you must proceed with prudence and circumspection, for the prince is cunning. You will represent to him also, in a proper manner, the error he labors under in believing that some are predestinated to one thing and some to another; and that thus he who is predestinated to evil can do nothing but evil, and he who is predestinated to good can do nothing but good, and that, consequently, we can change nothing of what is to happena dreadful error, especially in what regards our salvation.
THREE:It is almost touching, Mr. Carlyle writes, to reflect how unexpectedly, like a bolt out of the blue, all this had come upon Frederick, and how it overset his fine programme for the winter at Reinsberg, and for his life generally. Not the Peaceable magnanimities, but the Warlike, are the thing appointed Frederick this winter, and mainly henceforth. Those golden or soft radiances which we saw in him, admirable to Voltaire and to Frederick, and to an esurient philanthropic world, it is not218 those, it is the steel bright or stellar kind that are to become predominant in Fredericks existence; grim hail-storms, thunders, and tornado for an existence to him instead of the opulent genialities and halcyon weather anticipated by himself and others.
